Childhood Memories
by angel-death-dealer
Summary: Johnny's got hold of a photo album, and with the possibility of baby pictures being shown to Reed, Sue's not happy about it. However, there's one thing she's not prepared for.


"Don't even _think _about it"

"I'll do it."

"You won't"

"I _so _will."

"I'd love to see you try."

"Don't tempt me, I'm a man on the edge."

"_Alright_." Reed interrupted. He stood diplomatically in between two of his team mates, arms outstretched a little more than an average mans as he tried in vain to separate the two who attempted over and over again to try and, in their own words, kill each other.

"Do it and I'll kill you."

"Not if I kill you first."

Of course, while most would hear the words and assume them to come from Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm, instead, it was more inclusive to the female teammate of the Fantastic Four. Sue Storm was the target of her brother's wrath. That is, if you include showing an ex-boyfriend your baby pictures a form of wrath.

"Put the photo album away." She ordered him, fighting against Reed's arm as it held her multiple times with the same arm.

"No." Johnny said stubbornly. "Dad gave it to me and said I could do whatever I want with it."

"And the two options he gave you were to keep them in your storage or pass them on to Aunt Mary." Sue reminded him. "Or did you have a relapse of your selective hearing again?"

"I'm sorry, what?" He asked her, so engrossed in a particular open page of the album that he hadn't been listening to her. Her response was to almost growl from the back of her throat, a sound so different from what you'd expect from the usually passive blonde that Reed almost released her in surprise. Almost. It was a good thing that he hadn't, as a superhero might have been arrested for murder at that moment otherwise. Johnny grinned and held up the album. "Seriously, remember this day? It was the day that you…"

"Finish that sentence and I'll-"

"_Alright, just stop_!" Reed said loudly, making sure that his voice was louder than whatever profanity Sue was about to scream at her brother. He had a feeling that this situation wasn't going to end well. Johnny with a photograph could be lethal, especially now that they were infamous in the city. One more drunken night out where he forgot his jacket at a bar could make it possible for Sue not to leave the Baxter Building again, apart from to attend her brothers funeral. Perhaps also to attend the police hearing to insist that she wasn't responsible for the younger Storm's conspicuous demise.

At Reed's call, both of them stopped.

"Right." Reed said in the sudden silence. "Johnny, close the album." Johnny looked crestfallen. "Do it."

Grumbling something that sounded like 'goddamn leader business going to his head', Johnny snapped the photograph album shut and held it underneath his arm.

"Good." Reed nodded. "And Sue-"

"I'm not doing anything." She insisted unfairly.

"Just leave Johnny alone." Reed told her, as she awkwardly twisted his stretched arms so that she was facing him now.

"Excuse me?" She challenged him, sending a shiver of fear through Reed for a moment. He'd been on the receiving end of one of these glares before, and he wasn't eager to put himself in that position again. However, desperate times call for desperate measures, and if he didn't do something, Sue was going to do something she was going to regret all in the name of her inner child's dignity.

"The more you fight him, the more he's going to retaliate." He explained. "You grew up with him, remember?"

"Vividly."

"Did he ever read your diary?" Reed asked her.

Johnny laughed to himself, and Sue glared at him over her shoulder. "He photocopied the pages and posted them in Rick Morris's locker." She told him, clearly disturbed by the memory.

"Who is Rick Morris?" Reed asked her.

Johnny grinned, feeling safer to step closer to Sue now that she was clearly contained in her elasticised confinement. "He was the guy that Sue fancied." He explained. "You never did hook up with him, did you?" Johnny realised.

"Why would he want to after he read the page of my diary that talked about him?" Sue shot at him.

He laughed again, but stopped when he found Reed glaring at him as well. "What?" He asked innocently.

"That was pretty mean." Reed told him.

"It was evil." Sue elaborated. "_Pure evil_."

"You love me really." Johnny smiled, ruffling Sue's hair and then stepping back out of arms reach so that she couldn't reach when she lunged at him. Thankfully, Reed held her tight again.

"You are an evil, spiteful, _mean_ little brother." Sue growled through her clenched jaw.

Johnny looked thoughtful for a moment. "If that's so, then it would be only right for me to do the indecent thing with these photos and hand them over to the photographers waiting outside the building."

For a moment, Sue's eyes filled with rage, until it was replaced with complete terror. "Don't you dare!"

"What are you so afraid of?" Johnny asked. "What do you think is in here?"

"I _never _liked having my photo taken, and you know it." Sue told him. "I never look nice in photos."

"Shouldn't we let Reed be the judge of that?" Johnny said, opening up the album again. "Here we go…our last summer holiday with Mom. Remember that one?"

Sue softened. She remembered that one. Smiling, fond memories flooded back to her. "Blossom Peak Cabin." She nodded.

Johnny nodded, confirming that. "Yeah, here's where you lost your bathing suit but still went swimming in the big lake…man, Reed, you'll love this." Johnny laughed. "It'll be the most you've seen of Sue in a few years."

"JONATHAN LOWELL SPENCER STORM, I SWEAR TO GOD!!!"

Sue lunged again, and this time broke free of Reed's arms. However, once free of his grasp, she stopped in front of her brother, looking at him with a mixture of anger and betrayal written all over her face. Now that she had the opportunity to grab the heavy lamp on the table and do some damage with it, all she could think about was that her baby brother, whom she had protected and raised in their mothers absence, was humiliating her as if it were the only thing he could to do repay her for years of hard work on his behalf.

She could see in his playful eyes that he was forgetting she'd worked two jobs to put him through college, as well as concentrating on her own studies. He wasn't remembering how she'd helped him get the grades he needed to fulfil the childhood dream of becoming an astronaut. He was forgetting the nights when he was very young, where he'd talk about going to stars and she'd have faith in him that he'd get there. He was forgetting that there was many days where she had sacrificed her own pleasures, her own dreams, just so that he wouldn't get into any more trouble than he usually did. Her first trip out in the car after she'd passed her driving test was to go and collect him in the middle of the night from the police station.

He couldn't remember.

"You don't remember." She spoke aloud. "You don't remember what I've done for you." Johnny's smile faded, replaced with a look of confusion. "If you're really going to humiliate me like this, then there's no way that you can remember what I've done for you…what I sacrificed…what I missed out on so that you'd have better chances and a better life than a drunk dad and a dead mother could provide." Sue shook her head, fighting the mortified tears that were coming to her eyes. "You can't remember. If you did, then you wouldn't be repaying me by completely humiliating me in front of the closest thing to a family we have. You don't remember me for what I did, you're remembering me as who I was in those photographs."

Before anyone could say another word, she turned on her heel and walked out of the room. As she did so, her head bowed, one of her hand rising up as if to wipe the falling tears. Johnny and Reed were silent until the room was filled with the echoing sound of Sue's bedroom door slamming closed behind her. Straight away, Reed turned to look at Johnny, a disappointed, almost fatherly, look on his face.

"What?" Johnny asked him. "What did I do?"

"Honestly, Johnny-"

"No, you don't get it." Johnny explained. "Dad gave me these photos because I asked him for them."

Reed looked almost appalled for a moment. "You asked him for embarrassing pictures of your sister?"

"No. I asked him for the good pictures." Johnny explained. Reed looked confused still. "Look, sit down. Let me show you the pictures."

"Sue, can I come in?"

She looked up at the sound of Reed's voice, muffled by the door. "I want to be alone." She told him, hoping that he couldn't hear that she'd been crying.

"Sue, it's just me." He told her softly.

She went up to the door, opening it. Straight away, he could see the dead tears on her cheeks, and just as immediately, she could see the giveaway that had been the blue folder in his arms. The photograph album. "He's shown you, hasn't he?" She asked him, her voice void of emotion.

Instead of answering her question, Reed just looked her in the eye. "Can I come in?" He repeated.

Silently, she stepped back, leaving the door open for him to do as he wished, while she went back and sat on the bed, directly in the centre of the two pillows. Following her, Reed sat down on the edge of the mattress.

"Well?" She asked, her eyes bearing into his.

"Yes, he showed me." Reed nodded.

Sue groaned, picking up a nearby pillow and covering her face with it.

"He showed me, and he explained."

She raised her head. "Explained what?"

Reed handed her the photographs. "Look at them." She stared at it stubbornly for a moment. "Go on." Surrendering, she opened it.

Instead of the horribly embarrassing photos she had been expecting, she was met with smiling faces. Pictures from her past that she wasn't ashamed of. Snapshots of her mother and father, back before death and alcoholism had become the shadow over their family. Back before Johnny used to get in trouble, or before Sue took over the motherly role. Inside the album, Sue was never older than eleven years old, the age she had been when her mother had died. Every photograph was beautiful; taken on holidays, birthdays, family outings…days she'd forgotten about because of the things that Johnny had forgotten about.

"Oh my God." She whispered to herself.

"He asked for the photographs." Reed explained as she flicked through the pages. "He wanted to show you the memories that you'd forgotten. He wanted to remind you that you had a happy childhood; and that good times might be in the past, but that doesn't mean that they have to stay there in memory."

"He never forgot." She realised.

"How could I?" Came Johnny's voice from the doorway. Sue and Reed both looked up. "How could I forget when you did absolutely everything? How could I forget everything that you did for me, when you did so much?"

"Why?" She asked him. "Why do this, all this, for me?"

Johnny frowned at her, and then looked at Reed. "She really doesn't remember, does she?"

Reed shook her head. "Hasn't caught on all morning."

"What's going on?" Sue asked them, looking between the two. "What am I supposed to remember?"

Johnny sat down on the other side of the mattress, mirroring the position that Reed had on Sue's other side. "Sue, these are the good times." Johnny told her. "Before we had to start looking out for each other because Mom and Dad couldn't, we used to be normal kids. We used to fight, and shout and scream, but we used to be proper brother and sister as well. We used to get along, and we used to sit together in photos…and we used to be happy." He grumbled under his breath, looking away as if to make the moment seem less emotional for him. "I guess…with all this cosmic radiation crap, we haven't had much good stuff lately, and I figured you could use some good memories to hold on to…especially today."

"What's today?" Sue asked.

"Today is the Eleventh of July." Reed told her, watching as her eyes widened in final recognition.

"Oh, my God…"

"Happy Birthday, Susie." Johnny told her, indicating the album in her hands. "Took me ages, hope you like it."

She looked at him, astounded. "You put this together?"

"Yeah, I thought you'd get suspicious when I told you I was going to parties in the middle of the day, but you didn't." Johnny shrugged. "I was really going over to Dad's, sitting with him and Aunt Mary, putting this together from all the photos in the attic."

"And all that earlier…"

"Was just me being me." Johnny assured her. "Don't worry, the only photo from Blossom Peak is one of me and Dad lighting a campfire."

Sue smiled, putting her arms around Johnny. "Thank you."

He looked uncomfortable, squirming away from her. "Yeah, whatever, you wanna stop with the girly crap?" He said, and she released him. "Just…have a good birthday for once, okay?"

She nodded, smiling still. "Okay."

He stood up, clearly wanting to get a safe distance away from her for when he said his final line. He always got the last line when he was leaving the room, because it gave him the safety barrier. He paused in the doorway, turning to face his sister once more. "Besides," He smirked. "The embarrassing pictures are for your fortieth."

"JOHNNY!"

"Happy birthday, Susie!" He shouted from down the hall, running already.

END.


End file.
